So Just Exactly What Made Me Write This
I've been learning Chinese since I was a child. But being in the language environment I was in, I wouldn't consider myself as a native speaker of Chinese. Even now, I find it difficult to converse very fluently with native Chinese people from China. I have the tendencies to always put in some English vocabulary or terms that I can't express in Chinese without a moment's thought. However, my knowledge about Chinese is still good as I majored in Chinese in university and I've been giving tuition to many for quite a few years.
During these years, I've come to know that to master Chinese, you really would need to be equipped with three things. You need enthusiasm, the proper techniques and good learning tools. I have my individual way of thinking when it comes to Chinese language learning. It often irritates me whenever I observe how schools within my homeland are educating the students in the wrong manner, either by continuously lowering standards, or reducing the learning of important aspects of the language such as writing.
Thus, I decided to write down what I know that works, so that other beginners can use these proper techniques and concepts when they do their Chinese language learning.
The Three Aspects of Language-Pronunciation, Semantics and Language Symbols
Most non native speakers who ever tried learning Chinese or are currently learning Chinese never fail to complain that Chinese is a very difficult language to learn. These people often concentrate on mastering Chinese in the spoken form.
However, they don't realize that due to the language's linguistic features, there exist a very close relationship between Chinese sounds, Chinese characters and their relevant meanings. When we chose to ignore learning the form and the meaning so that we can tackle the speaking part more efficiently, we actually are increasing the difficulty for ourselves. Let me explain, Chinese sound variants are very limited, and so the language turns to its symbols to encode the various different meanings, or semantics in the language. The result is that one sound, including its tone, can actually mean many, many things. For example: ji1 (first tone of the pronunciation "ji" in Chinese pinyin) can mean "small table", "hit", "chicken", "accumulate" to name a few. How do we know what someone is referring to when we hear the sound? We do this by learning the Chinese characters when we learn the corresponding pronunciation. When put into context, we would be able to call to our minds just what "ji" refers to. Do note that if we mispronounced the first tone into a 2nd tone, we would actually be meaning another set of very different things.
So I haven't stopped reminding my students to build a solid foundation through memorizing Chinese basics. I do not think that one can just learn creatively and magically be able to use the acquired knowledge with ease. There are bound to be rules in grammar, pronunciation and even character writing when people learn Chinese.
Beginners learning the Chinese language often could not understand why the characters that they have mastered could turn out to mean very different things when stringed together with other just as familiar characters, especially when these characters happen to show up so frequently.
Well actually for me, I would advice that you don't need to memorize every single word that you come across, because that would be impossible. (I forgot to mention that in Chinese, words and characters are two separate concepts, because usually a word would consist of two or more characters, also not necessarily so.) However, what you do need to do is to memorize those characters that have the highest frequencies of occurrence and understand their individual root meanings. This will immensely speed up your absorption of new words as these new words are formed by the characters you already know, and you would be able to fairly accurately guess their meanings when combined.
There will definitely be words that we cannot guess from the characters that form the word, but the number of those words are not large. There are actually many fundamental meanings to every Chinese character, and the more we understand, the easier it will become. It is actually doable, so long as you persevere in your learning and practice of the language.
How do one reinforce all those knowledge that has been learned? Just expose your knowledge to as many senses as you possibly can. Create associations between your Chinese vocabulary and your surroundings. Make sure you can visually see what you learn. Listen to it, use it, and better still experience it in different contexts. Our minds recalls better when information is interlinked and carries more weight.
How to Maintain Perseverance
Some people never really finished learning the language they set out to learn. The blame it on the language, they find excuses that it is just too time consuming, or that there wasn't anyone to practise with.
Motivation is crucial to maintain our passion in learning and it also adds fun to learning. Steve Kaufman, who have till date mastered ten languages, would tell you that the only way to keep yourself interested in language learning, is to continue to find reading materials that are interesting to you.
Steve Kaufman maintains that interesting articles would push us to continue learning just so we can finish reading whatever we have set out to finish. Two other similar examples are people who learned korean and Japanese because they fell in love with Korean TV variety shows and Japanese anime cartoons.
Other ways to keep ourselves motivated is by tracking our own progress and uncovering what other aspect of the language and culture makes us tick. If it's movies, TV shows and music videos, then we can always use them as learning resources and pushing factors to find out more about Chinese.
Resources and Tools
Learning Chinese language is similar to everything else. And that includes getting hold of the right tools to help us learn better.
For example, you cannot do with at least one dictionary for you to look up your unfamiliar words, or a couple of audio tapes so that you can listen to the correct way of pronouncing the various sounds in Chinese. You will need to get assessment books to do some written exercises so that you know where your standard is at, or at least complete some tests to see if you have absorbed what you have learned. Go through resources so that you make sure that every aspect is more or less touched upon, from speaking and writing, to usage and grammar. Also make sure some "survival topics" are taught. You wouldn't be considered knowing Chinese unless you know something about Chinese culture and Chinese food, and how to order your Chinese food in Mandarin Chinese!
I've been learning Chinese since I was a child. But being in the language environment I was in, I wouldn't consider myself as a native speaker of Chinese. Even now, I find it difficult to converse very fluently with native Chinese people from China. I have the tendencies to always put in some English vocabulary or terms that I can't express in Chinese without a moment's thought. However, my knowledge about Chinese is still good as I majored in Chinese in university and I've been giving tuition to many for quite a few years.
During these years, I've come to know that to master Chinese, you really would need to be equipped with three things. You need enthusiasm, the proper techniques and good learning tools. I have my individual way of thinking when it comes to Chinese language learning. It often irritates me whenever I observe how schools within my homeland are educating the students in the wrong manner, either by continuously lowering standards, or reducing the learning of important aspects of the language such as writing.
Thus, I decided to write down what I know that works, so that other beginners can use these proper techniques and concepts when they do their Chinese language learning.
The Three Aspects of Language-Pronunciation, Semantics and Language Symbols
Most non native speakers who ever tried learning Chinese or are currently learning Chinese never fail to complain that Chinese is a very difficult language to learn. These people often concentrate on mastering Chinese in the spoken form.
However, they don't realize that due to the language's linguistic features, there exist a very close relationship between Chinese sounds, Chinese characters and their relevant meanings. When we chose to ignore learning the form and the meaning so that we can tackle the speaking part more efficiently, we actually are increasing the difficulty for ourselves. Let me explain, Chinese sound variants are very limited, and so the language turns to its symbols to encode the various different meanings, or semantics in the language. The result is that one sound, including its tone, can actually mean many, many things. For example: ji1 (first tone of the pronunciation "ji" in Chinese pinyin) can mean "small table", "hit", "chicken", "accumulate" to name a few. How do we know what someone is referring to when we hear the sound? We do this by learning the Chinese characters when we learn the corresponding pronunciation. When put into context, we would be able to call to our minds just what "ji" refers to. Do note that if we mispronounced the first tone into a 2nd tone, we would actually be meaning another set of very different things.
So I haven't stopped reminding my students to build a solid foundation through memorizing Chinese basics. I do not think that one can just learn creatively and magically be able to use the acquired knowledge with ease. There are bound to be rules in grammar, pronunciation and even character writing when people learn Chinese.
Beginners learning the Chinese language often could not understand why the characters that they have mastered could turn out to mean very different things when stringed together with other just as familiar characters, especially when these characters happen to show up so frequently.
Well actually for me, I would advice that you don't need to memorize every single word that you come across, because that would be impossible. (I forgot to mention that in Chinese, words and characters are two separate concepts, because usually a word would consist of two or more characters, also not necessarily so.) However, what you do need to do is to memorize those characters that have the highest frequencies of occurrence and understand their individual root meanings. This will immensely speed up your absorption of new words as these new words are formed by the characters you already know, and you would be able to fairly accurately guess their meanings when combined.
There will definitely be words that we cannot guess from the characters that form the word, but the number of those words are not large. There are actually many fundamental meanings to every Chinese character, and the more we understand, the easier it will become. It is actually doable, so long as you persevere in your learning and practice of the language.
How do one reinforce all those knowledge that has been learned? Just expose your knowledge to as many senses as you possibly can. Create associations between your Chinese vocabulary and your surroundings. Make sure you can visually see what you learn. Listen to it, use it, and better still experience it in different contexts. Our minds recalls better when information is interlinked and carries more weight.
How to Maintain Perseverance
Some people never really finished learning the language they set out to learn. The blame it on the language, they find excuses that it is just too time consuming, or that there wasn't anyone to practise with.
Motivation is crucial to maintain our passion in learning and it also adds fun to learning. Steve Kaufman, who have till date mastered ten languages, would tell you that the only way to keep yourself interested in language learning, is to continue to find reading materials that are interesting to you.
Steve Kaufman maintains that interesting articles would push us to continue learning just so we can finish reading whatever we have set out to finish. Two other similar examples are people who learned korean and Japanese because they fell in love with Korean TV variety shows and Japanese anime cartoons.
Other ways to keep ourselves motivated is by tracking our own progress and uncovering what other aspect of the language and culture makes us tick. If it's movies, TV shows and music videos, then we can always use them as learning resources and pushing factors to find out more about Chinese.
Resources and Tools
Learning Chinese language is similar to everything else. And that includes getting hold of the right tools to help us learn better.
For example, you cannot do with at least one dictionary for you to look up your unfamiliar words, or a couple of audio tapes so that you can listen to the correct way of pronouncing the various sounds in Chinese. You will need to get assessment books to do some written exercises so that you know where your standard is at, or at least complete some tests to see if you have absorbed what you have learned. Go through resources so that you make sure that every aspect is more or less touched upon, from speaking and writing, to usage and grammar. Also make sure some "survival topics" are taught. You wouldn't be considered knowing Chinese unless you know something about Chinese culture and Chinese food, and how to order your Chinese food in Mandarin Chinese!
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